The Secret Service responded online to claims that former President Trump’s team had sought additional security, amid renewed pressure for the agency to explain how Saturday’s assassination attempt could have occurred.
“There is a false claim that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources and that they were denied,” Secret Service spokesman Andrew Guglielmi wrote on X, responding to Trump supporters and online claims.
“That is absolutely false. In fact, we added resources, technology and protective capabilities as part of the increased pace of campaign travel.”
His comment comes as congressional Republicans prepare to conduct a “full investigation” into the attempted assassination of Trump and question the head of the Secret Service about the incident.
The agency is facing tough questions about how a gunman could have come so close to killing a former president on his way to his party’s convention four months before the election.
Dramatic footage from the incident shows Secret Service agents rushing to protect Trump after the shooting in Pennsylvania, but the agency was not present during a police briefing and faces questions about how the suspected shooter was able to access a high roof near the event venue.
The Secret Service has responded to claims that Donald Trump’s team had sought additional security ahead of the shocking assassination attempt on the former president.
House Republicans plan to bring Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle in for what is expected to be a heated questioning on July 22 as lawmakers demand answers.
“I have already reached out to the Secret Service to request a briefing and am also calling on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to appear at a hearing. The Oversight Committee will send a formal invitation soon,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer of Kentucky.
The suspected shooter came within inches of killing the former president, who was wounded in the ear and rushed away from his speech in Pennsylvania by Secret Service agents.
The agency has already announced its own investigation into how a shooter armed with an AR rifle managed to scale a building that offered better sight lines to where the president was speaking. He fired multiple shots from what the agency called an “elevated position” about 150 yards away from Trump.
Some witnesses said they were alerted to suspicious activity minutes before the shooting.
One witness said those delays lasted for several minutes. There are questions about why the agency itself did not have control of the nearby roof, why a member of the counterattack team did not intervene before the incident and how the shooter was able to fire multiple shots.
The agency will be questioned about how a shooting suspect was able to get to a high place.
The Secret Service called the claim “absolutely false.”
The snipers managed to eliminate the alleged shooter, but not until he shot the former president.
The officers who rushed to protect Trump are being praised, but the agency is already facing tough questions about how the incident was allowed to happen.
“There will be an intensive review,” said former Secret Service agent Joseph LaSorsa. “There will be a massive reshuffle,” he told Reuters. “This cannot happen.”
Kevin Rojek, FBI special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, told a reporter at a briefing hours after the shooting that “there’s going to be a long investigation into exactly what happened” and that it could take months. “It’s surprising” that the shooter was able to fire four or five shots, he said.
Retired Secret Service agent Jeff James told Fox News that the snipers may not have heeded the warnings in time because they were focused on long-range territory, up to 1,000 yards away.
“It’s possible they were looking at what they thought was another target behind him. When people, you know, if this really happened and people were saying, hey, there’s a guy up there, there’s a guy up there, they may have been looking at a raised natural formation in the tree line behind those buildings,” he told Fox News.
“There’s a lot to see at once, and people are shouting and pointing, and it’s hard, maybe difficult, to discern what they’re pointing at. It certainly could be that something right there might not be seen,” he said.
Amid what is sure to be a long-term investigation, security is getting a new look at the convention where Republican officials from around the country are gathering and where Trump is set to receive his party’s nomination on Thursday.
The Republican Convention is set to begin in just hours and a senior official said security at the event will be “re-examined.”
Several federal agencies have been planning for months how to ensure security for the convention, which is considered a national security event. ABC News cited a senior federal official as saying the elaborate security plan would be reexamined.
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson told CNN, when asked about preparations, that “I know there’s a lot of manpower here and that’s the first security measure, you have to have people, law enforcement officers present to deter any kind of violence.” He added: “I’m not worried about the citizens of Wisconsin, I would be worried about outside agitators. But I obviously think this is just going to increase security. It needs to be increased.”